An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen

by Liz Freeland

  Eddie was sitting up as I approached the crib, which seemed quite an accomplishment for under four months. Slow, Sister Eleanor had predicted. Just showed what she knew. “Look at you!” I greeted him. “Do you like your new room, Eddie?”

  His gummy smile grew bigger, and I picked up his teddy bear and held it in front of him, moving its arm like a puppet that wanted to shake hands. Eddie reached out and grabbed the bear’s furry claw.

  “Quiet little chap,” Gerald said slowly.

  “He’s mute,” I said. “He doesn’t really make many sounds—just gurgles and incidental noises like that.”

  I continued to focus on Eddie for a few moments until I noticed that someone else in the room had gone mute: Gerald. His face was as pale as plaster, and his hands trembled slightly.

  So it was true. Ruthie hadn’t just lifted his passport off him on the street. He knew Eddie—he’d been in that shabby flat. He’d been with Ruthie. His mild-mannered salesman demeanor, his vulnerability as a wounded soldier . . . had that all been an act to cover up a darker self? All this time, I’d known there was a possibility that Gerald was tied up in Ruthie’s death, possibly even responsible for it, yet part of me hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked. My pulse was racing. It took effort to stay calm and feign ignorance.

  He backed up a step, and then had to catch himself on the dresser. “It’s . . . the heat. I’m sorry, but I find that I’m feeling unwell. Perhaps that’s why . . . that incident earlier . . . I hope you’ll forgive that mistake . . .” He took another step toward the door. “You’ll have to excuse me. Please make my apologies to your aunt.”

  He fled the room.

  I’d envisioned Gerald’s guilty conscience leading him to a confession—as in one of my aunt’s books, where the murderer always blurted out his guilt to the detective at the end. A foolish expectation. Yet Gerald had reacted so violently to seeing Eddie that I knew now that I hadn’t been wrong about his involvement.

  I hurried toward the door to follow him when Muldoon’s figure appeared, blocking me. “Rather old for you, isn’t he?”

  “It’s not what you think.” The trouble was, when he found out who Gerald really was, he would think it was worse. “Would you mind stepping out of the way? He’s a suspect and I need to catch up to him.”

  “You kiss suspects?”

  “I didn’t kiss him. That was Gerald Hughes, and he wasn’t kissing me, he was kissing Louise Frobisher.”

  “What—” Muldoon’s voice cut off, and his face registered the effort of putting all the pieces together. “I’ve heard the name Gerald Hughes before, haven’t I? Please tell me I’m wrong.”

  “He was one of the men who had his passport stolen by Ruthie.”

  “And you have been following him around under a false name in the hopes of getting him to confess to Ruthie’s murder?”

  “He was the only passport man I could track down. I wanted to see what I could find out about Ruthie from him.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “That he knew Ruthie.”

  The moment I said it, I felt ridiculous. Of course he’d known her. I expected Muldoon to point this out, but he’d become distracted by Eddie in his crib. The baby was watching us.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It’s Eddie.”

  Frowning, he moved toward the baby, who opened his mouth in welcome to the newcomer. He really was cute.

  “Where did he come from?”

  “Hell’s Kitchen, by way of New York Foundling. He’s Ruthie’s surviving child.” I told him about the flu, and my aunt’s bringing him home for the holidays.

  Just as I had done minutes before, Muldoon gazed around the room in amazement. “Your aunt doesn’t do anything by halves, does she?”

  “No.”

  “And so you brought Gerald Hughes here to meet Ruthie’s child.”

  I nodded, again feeling the excitement I had when I saw Gerald reacting to Eddie. “You’ve never seen a man so spooked.”

  “Yes, I have. I saw Hughes himself fleeing out this door not five minutes ago.”

  “And why would he do that?” I asked. “There was guilt in his eyes. He looked frightened—I’m sure of it.”

  Muldoon buried his hands in his pockets. “He doesn’t know you’re a policewoman?”

  “No.”

  “And so a woman he’s been seeing happens to drag him to her aunt’s house and show him the baby of a dead prostitute of his acquaintance. If you were in his shoes, what would you think?”

  “You don’t understand. He looked like a trapped animal.”

  “Because that’s what you did—you trapped him, and I don’t like to think about by what means you managed it.”

  He was acting as if I were some tawdry, treacherous female who’d tricked a good man through seduction. Salome of Greenwich Village. “It’s not what you’re thinking. It was all very innocent—a night at the theater, a few walks around town, meals . . .”

  His eyes widened. “Sounds like quite a campaign. How long did this go on?”

  “Not even two weeks.”

  “How far did you intend to lead him on?”

  “Is it my fault that Gerald Hughes is a lonely soul, susceptible to kindness from any woman?”

  “Why didn’t you simply ask him about Ruthie?”

  “What if he killed her? Do you think it would have been smart to ask him that straightaway? He would have lied, or maybe decided to do away with me, as well.”

  “If he’s guilty, he still might try to do away with you,” he pointed out.

  I froze. I’d known all along that Gerald might be dangerous, but I’d been downplaying the possibility for so long I’d begun to believe my own reassurances to others.

  “But the chances are he simply had his passport stolen by a prostitute,” Muldoon said.

  “I wish I could find something that would actually tie him to Ruthie’s apartment. If only I could have gotten into his hotel room to search his things . . .”

  Muldoon raked a hand through his coal-dark hair. “I’m very glad you didn’t.”

  “But don’t you see? I’ve come this far—and now I lack a way to really frighten the truth out of him. It’s frustrating.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve been gadding about town with a strange man in order to pursue some half-cocked investigation. It doesn’t show the best judgment, Louise.”

  “The NYPD not pursuing its own investigation of Ruthie’s death doesn’t show very good judgment to me.”

  “I understand you feel that Ruthie’s death hasn’t received the attention it deserved, but detectives have to work with the evidence we’re given. Part of surviving in the police is accepting that justice isn’t always meted out evenly, and occasionally it isn’t served at all.”

  I couldn’t accept that. I couldn’t believe he could, either.

  A short silence marked the impasse we’d reached.

  “Is there a reason you came here tonight?” I asked. “It couldn’t have been simply to watch me getting mauled in hallways, or to sweat.”

  “Why is it so hot?”

  “My aunt has a theory that babies need warmth. She read a book about it.”

  “Someone needs to chuck that book out. Surely with your talent for subterfuge you could manage that?”

  Very funny. “You still haven’t told me why you came tonight. Not that my aunt won’t be delighted to see you.”

  “I thought perhaps you and Callie might have brought Anna here. My sister’s a stranger these days. She occasionally leaves me notes telling me she’s staying with you, but when I went to look for her there this evening in the hopes of escorting her home, no one answered my knock. I remembered it was Thursday night, so I came here.”

  “I haven’t seen her, but my irregular schedule makes it hard to keep up with people. Callie says everyone at the studio loves Anna, though. They’re building up her part.”

  The lines a
round his mouth deepened. “She’ll never get over being in a movie. It’s really turned her head.”

  “It’s good for her, surely.” Muldoon brought out the devil’s advocate in me. “She’s got so much energy and drive—even the church ladies thought she was too much for them. Now she’s found a productive outlet for all her energy.”

  He mopped a handkerchief across the back of his neck. “Well, maybe she’ll get bored with it after a little while.”

  When we went back downstairs, I dreaded Muldoon’s talking to my aunt, who naturally would want to know what had happened with Gerald Hughes. The less said about that at the moment the better.

  But when we came down, a woman I didn’t recognize had sat down at the piano and started to play with such effortless brilliance, Gerald Hughes was now the farthest thing from my aunt’s or anyone else’s mind. Guests circled the old Chickering, which produced the most beautiful sounds in its half-century of life. The woman at the instrument played a long piece based on Balkan tunes, rousing and sad by turns.

  “Who is it?” I whispered to Otto, who was rapt.

  “Amy Beach,” he whispered.

  I’d heard of her, but couldn’t imagine how she’d managed to find her way to my aunt’s house. Mrs. Beach had written the first ever symphony by an American woman, and had traveled around Europe, only coming back at the start of the war. I remembered hearing about her because she’d said she was pro-German, but only pro artistic Germany, not militaristic Germany.

  When the piece finished, I turned to see Muldoon’s reaction, but there was an empty space next to me, and no sign of him anywhere in the room.

  CHAPTER 15

  The next morning I was supposed to begin with the dog’s watch, so I set my alarm early. My sleep patterns were so confused now, I lay awake half the night and spent my first full day shift feeling like a sleepwalker.

  My aunt’s party had marked an end to my half-baked investigation, I knew. I had proven nothing. Perhaps, as Muldoon had said, I had to accept that justice couldn’t always be served. But why was it always the Ruthies of the world that justice bypassed?

  Justice or no justice, at the end of my shift I was happy to shrug on my coat and go home. For the first time in a long time, I was determined to relax over a leisurely supper, read a little, go to bed at a decent hour, and return to work the next day refreshed. A little peaceful domesticity—that was what I needed. For the first night since Thanksgiving, I was not going to think about Ruthie Jones.

  On my way home, I passed a butcher who advertised smoked hams in the window. It was as if Bernice were calling out to me. All I had to do was slice it up and boil some kind of vegetable to go with it. It was time to focus on living my life, not obsessing over murders.

  I ducked into the butcher shop and bought an ambitiously large ham, which the man behind the counter wrapped up for me. I put it in the string shopping bag I carried in my satchel. After a block, I realized I might have gone overboard and bought too much; my arm started to get tired carrying the thing. When I couldn’t get a seat on the streetcar downtown, I ended up balancing it on my hip as if it were an infant. In the close confines, the ham seemed to smell even stronger. Everyone in the car was probably salivating by the time I got off at Eighth Street.

  I made my way home, crossing Sixth Avenue and then turning down my street, which was practically deserted. And dark. The days were now so short, it was fully dark by six. The puddles of light let out by the streetlamps were inadequate.

  A block from my building, on a quiet residential street, I heard footsteps behind me, almost as if someone was following me. You’re just imagining things. When I sped up, however, so did the footsteps. I strained to hear better, placing my feet on the sidewalk as quietly as possible.

  A horrible thought entered my mind. What had Muldoon said last night? “He might still try to do away with you.” And to be done away with so ignominiously—me on the way home with my ham, bludgeoned to death in the street by a one-legged textile salesman.

  Then an even more chilling thought occurred to me. What if this wasn’t actually Gerald, but one of Leonard Cain’s goons coming to exact Cain’s final revenge? December twentieth, the anniversary of his sentencing, wasn’t far away.

  Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to slow down. As the steps grew louder and more rapid behind me, my grip around the string bag tensed. Much like Bernice, my Aunt Sonja, who’d raised me, had always despaired of my ever learning to be of any use in the kitchen, but I had absorbed one bit of cooking wisdom that she’d imparted: sometimes it was best to use what you had on hand.

  I waited until I’d passed out of a puddle of light from the streetlamp. I wanted the advantage of being able to see my foe better than he could see me. I slowed almost to a standstill until the quickening steps were almost even with me. Then I grabbed the string bag with both hands and whirled like an athlete executing the hammer throw. I angled my string bag so that the heavy weight moved in an arc and clipped the man on the jaw with a satisfying smack.

  Gerald Hughes cried out and stumbled to the ground. Not about to relinquish my advantage, I scurried over and towered above him while he tried to push himself up from one knee. If he made another move toward me, I was ready to slug him again with the ham.

  He groaned.

  “Why are you following me in the dark?” I asked. “You could have called my name.”

  He cupped his jaw, wincing as he looked up at me. “What did you hit me with?”

  “A smoked ham. How did you find me?”

  He worked his jaw, testing it. “How do you think? I followed you last night.”

  Last night? And I hadn’t noticed him. Worse, I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might do such a thing. I just assumed he’d fled out of guilt and wouldn’t want to be seen by me again.

  “I watched you go into a house,” he continued, “but when I asked a man coming out of that same building today to tell me which apartment was Miss Frobisher’s, he said there was no Miss Frobisher living there. Only a Miss Gale and a Miss Faulk.”

  Thanks, Wally.

  “Miss Faulk, I presume?”

  It was pointless to try to deny it. He knew my name, my address, everything.

  Although . . . not quite everything.

  “Imagine what a fool I felt—after I’d practically poured my heart out to you. I don’t know what kind of scheme you and that aunt of yours are operating. Is she really your aunt?”

  “She is.” I was glad, in that moment, that there was something about me that was true.

  “You must think I’m an idiot. I am an idiot. I knew women in this city lured men into traps, but you were very good. You seemed so genuine, and kind. It was the baby that gave me a jolt—I’d met his mother. I’m sure it was the same baby. What were you trying to get out of me? Money?”

  “No.”

  “So you say, but it’s always about money, isn’t it? Although if it was blackmail you intended, you took your time about it.” He was in a self-righteous swivet. “I should have reported you to the police. Or that detective you pointed out last night—maybe someone else hired him to follow you.”

  “I am the police.”

  He gaped at me. “You’re . . .”

  “Officer Louise Faulk of the New York City police.” I purposely left out my precinct information and kept my badge in my satchel. I wasn’t through deceiving Gerald Hughes quite yet.

  Hughes faltered back a step, and his face collapsed into the expression of a man who had just had shackles placed around his wrists. “Why would the police be watching me?”

  He seemed genuinely puzzled. Lots of criminals were excellent actors, though. “I was looking into your connection to a woman named Ruthie Jones.”

  “The mother of that mute baby. I knew it had to be the same one! That’s why I was so confused.”

  “Ruthie, as you well know, was also a prostitute who lived on Tenth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen.”

  He nodded, but in
the next moment, his nod became a shake. “Was? I don’t understand.”

  “I told you Eddie was an orphan. Ruthie died several days before Thanksgiving, when her body was finally discovered in her apartment. It was a grisly scene.”

  “Are you saying she was murdered?” Even in the dark, I noted Gerald’s face went two shades paler. “I had nothing to do with that. I swear it.”

  “But you did know Ruthie. She stole your passport.”

  He blinked. “Yes. Or, rather, I’m fairly certain she did. When I confronted her, she denied it.”

  “And that made you angry.”

  “Of course—but not enough to kill a woman. Can you really think so little of my character?”

  “Anything can happen in the heat of an argument, even over the most trivial matters.”

  “But there wasn’t an argument,” he said. “When I discovered my passport missing, I went back to her apartment and asked her if she’d found it. I was sure she’d taken it and my money.”

  “And?”

  He lifted his arms. “She denied it, and I left and never saw her again. What else could I do? I got another passport through the British consulate here.”

  “That’s how I found you.”

  He shook his head sadly. “After what happened with Ruthie, I should have known better than to trust a woman in this town.”

  “How did you meet Ruthie?” I asked. “The usual way?”

  He blinked. “Louise, please.”

  “Officer Faulk.”

  “I don’t care who or what you are. There was nothing sordid about my evening with Ruthie, at least not in the way you mean. I bumped into her at a picture show.”

  I’m sure my brows arched at that. “Really.”

  “Yes. There was a Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand picture on the bill.”

  “There usually is.” Those two seemed to make half of the pictures shown. “Go on.”

  “I must be the easiest mark in the world,” he lamented. “I first noticed her behind me in line. I’d just finished buying my ticket, but she was a few pennies short, so I offered to pay for her. Afterwards, when I was leaving, she caught up with me to thank me. She seemed like a very pleasant young woman. I offered to treat her to a light supper, and we had some wine. I walked her home—a very shabby neighborhood—and she asked me to come up. I . . . I feel foolish saying this, but I felt I should accompany her. The building was so . . .”